Disposable Heroes
by Tears of Stardust
Summary: Violently yanked from her comfortable reality by the fall of Meteor and Shinra Inc., Tiger must face the consequences of a fallen world and take the only choice left to her; the life of a mercenary. Now she must confront the true face of her fears: herse


Disposable Heroes

Disclaimer: I own Tiger and any other original characters that may result from my odd ramblings. I don't own Final Fantasy 7 or Disposable Heroes by Metallica, even though it is a very good song. Not even T.S. Eliot for that matter. Enjoy ^_^br br Forwardbr br "I am moved by these fancies that are curledbr Around these images and clung:br The notion of some infinitely gentlebr Infinitely suffering thing." br T.S. Eliot, "Preludes"br br "The moon has lost her memory."br T.S. Eliot, "Rhapsody on a Windy Night"br br "Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vicesbr Are fathered by our heroism. Virtuesbr Are forced upon us by our impudent These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree."br T.S. Eliot, "Gerontion"br br "Were we lead all that way forbr Birth or Death? There was a birth, certainly,br We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,br But had thought they were different; this Birth wasbr Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, br But no longer at ease here...br ..I should be glad of another death."br T.S. Eliot, "Journey of the Magi"br br

br Chapter One

They would all die. At this point in the game, it was no longer a question of what their fate would be. And it scared her. It scared her a lot.

It was dark and drizzling, the palm leaves form the trees all around closed in oppressively, dumping their load of moisture on to anyone who brushed by them.

The sounds of gunfire, screams from both humans and monsters and the ceaseless rustling in the forest around them put the team on edge. . . what remained of it anyway. Team Delta, to be precise. There had been 20 of them before this operation began, but now it was only her and two others close by that she could guarantee alive; yet, even then, they were disappearing and reappearing in the thick foliage. She wasn't used to this: before her recent career change to a mercenary she had been a mere security guard!

Suddenly, the crack of a gun was heard nearby, and one of the two men in front of her toppled to the ground. Their companion looked back, uttered a swear and then took off, leaving her with the wounded man.

'That's what you pay for when you hire a team of mercenaries,' she thought, 'As long as the goal is still acquirable, then they're in, but the second the shit hits the fan they run off with their tails between their legs'.

"Tiger," moaned the fallen man, and she rushed over, anxious to see the condition that had befallen him.

She knelt quickly in the muddy mess that the rain had made of the ground, ignoring it as it soaked through her fatigues. He was shot clean through his lower abdomen, pieces of his intestines and liver lying on the ground in front of him. Dark circles appeared on what remained of the front of his shirt, the blood from his gaping wound slowly trickling down and staining the ground. Tears of pain slid down his face, cutting tracks into the veil of grime that covered his face.

Tiger quickly pulled off her backpack and began to rustle through the things she had brought. She had to find something - anything - to staunch the bleeding. Finally, she reached something that felt like cloth and yanked it out, racing against time to try to save the man's life.

Pulling it free of the other contents of the bag, Tiger felt her heart sink to the ground and become submerged into the murky depths of the mud. Held within the trembling grip of her right hand was a muscle wrap, only about five feet long. Far too little, too late.

Suddenly, the man reached out and grabbed her forearm, startling her into dropping the wrap. It unraveled at her feet unnoticed and began to slowly sop up the muck.

"I'm not going to make it, am I?" The stark honesty in his voice made Tiger pause momentarily, and that was all the dying man needed for an answer. "Get out of here. Go to Mideel. Someone there might be able to help you."

"Mideel?" Tiger echoed helplessly. She had never been out of the metropolis of Midgar in her entire life and had never felt the need to become familiar with the rest of the world.

The man chuckled softly. "Get back to the boat and go south along this chain of islands. Mideel is on the east coast of the largest of the islands."

"But how do I get out of this damned forest?" Tiger asked, fighting against the panic that was threatening to set in.

Her fallen comrade coughed then, a rattling sound resounding through his slightly stocky frame. A fine spray of blood coated his lips and his dark eyes were already beginning to glaze over. "See over there, to the East? Go that way. Whenever you're lost in a forest, always head in the direction where you can see the most sky."

"Thank you," Tiger whispered softly, and then began to stand up. The man's grasp on her arm, however, beckoned her to stay a few moments longer; to be a testament for his death.

"I need you to do something for me," he rasped, his voice thick with pain and blood. "Do you see the gun beside me?"

Tiger looked to the man's left and saw the butt of the semi-automatic weapon he carried sticking out of the mud. At that moment, realization dawned upon her. "You want me to kill you."

The man nodded, a trickle of blood running out of the corner of his mouth and trailing into the dense stubble of his chin. "The pain . . . it just hurts so much. Please." Letting go of Tiger's forearm, he sat back and watched to see if she would fulfill his last request.

Tiger leaned forward and slowly plucked the gun from the puddle of mud, her hand trembling. She raised it slowly and placed the butt of the gun flush with her right shoulder. Trying to keep her body steady, she aligned the viewfinder with the center of the man's forehead.

A thousand thoughts began to fly and clash in her mind. What if too much mud got into the chamber and it doesn't fire? What if it does? Will this make me a murderer?

She put her finger on the trigger and squeezed very lightly. At first there was nothing, and Tiger gave hope to the theory that there was too much mud. But then there was a sharp snap from the muzzle of the gun and it jumped slightly against her shoulder with the recoil.

A perfect circular hole formed on the man's forehead and it trickled a tiny amount of blood before the upper-half of his body slumped forward and rolled off to his right side.

Tiger stood straight up, dropping the gun back into the muck without a single thought. Her chocolate brown eyes widened with shock and became like the eyes of a frightened doe. Her pulse had quickened and sweat dripped down her body in rivulets. Tiger's breath came out in short, mewling gasps for air.

Suddenly, a wave of nausea overcame Tiger, making her double over with her hands pressed on the area of fabric right over her knees. She threw up, the pale brown bile forced from her mouth mixing with the pools of mud on the ground.

Tears began to trek down her face and she stood motionless, allowing them to come. The sound of gunfire came from not far behind her, and Tiger's head snapped up, the forms of the trees and the leaves blurring in her vision with her eyes filled with moisture. She had no time for sorrow now: Tiger wasn't out of the forest yet.

She grabbed her bag and looking up and straight ahead, Tiger set her pace at a loping run, not daring anything faster with the bog of earth underneath her. Tiger held her arms up defensively in front of her face as she ran; spilling rainwater all over and receiving paper-cut like scratches from the edges of the leaves.

All at once, Tiger went face-first into the mire of mud beneath her, tripping over an extended root that poked out only slightly from the ground. Trying to quickly regain her feet, Tiger fought against the mud that clung to her and tried to force the young mercenary against the ground once more.

Wiping the mud off of herself as she began to run again, Tiger wondered why a rag-tag group of mercenaries had been sent to receive the materia in the first place. It's not like the glowing, magical orbs were a rarity: every town whether located in the slums or a thriving city like Junon had at least one store that sold the stuff.

Slipping a little into her pool of thinking, Tiger recalled the little speech one of her instructors had given her about how materia was made up of compressed mako energy, the life force of this planet. Materia was used by calling on the Planet, and then its energies interacted. In fact, Tiger was almost positive that she had packed a Fire materia in her bag somewhere.

Suddenly, Tiger broke out of the forest and onto a long stretch of land that extended far north and south of where she stood and extended only a little further to the east before it met a sandy stretch of beach. The sun shone merrily overhead, something that was hidden from them by the dense foliage of the forest.

'I have to go south. South is where the boats are,' Tiger mentally reminded herself.

She had only walked about ten minutes due south, keeping the forest to her right, before she came across her first monsters of this region.

They were dark green with antennae on top of their heads, their dark eyes glittering with vicious intelligence. There were three of them and they had the bodies of legless lobsters with the exception of the foremost pincers, which looked like they belonged to an oversized pray mantis. They weren't even as high as Tiger's knees, but she knew that they could somehow jump. Very high. The person who had briefed the group told them that the monsters were called "head hunters" and were extremely dangerous.

Tiger spoke the first words that came to her mind. "Oh shit." br br br br br A/N: Like? I'm trying to write this story so that all of my friends that have never played Final Fantasy 7 can understand it, which explains all the backtracking to the basics. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed, and please review with any comments, suggestions, questions, constructive criticisms or even just to inform about a gap in the storyline thus far. Thank you.


End file.
